beyondbinaryfandomcom-20200215-history
Coded Language
Coded language is language that is structured so as to limit intelligibility to non-natives, while keeping clear transmission of information between native speakers. Queer Code (not to be confused with Queer-coding - the practice of giving fictional characters queer characteristics without identifying them as queer). "Queer code" (aka "Gay code") is a particularly well developed super-verbal coded language (sv-cd) that consists of a nearly undefinable set of hidden mannerisms and 'tells' that indicate non-normative gender attraction and identification. The complexity of queer code derives from the historical development of the code being untraceable to any particular group, since queerness is universal across cultural and social boundaries. Different dialectics are of course developed along sociopolitical demographic lines, but in the wake of globalism many of those boundaries became less visible in the coming post-millennial culture. Why Do Gay Men Like Me Walk This Way? :"On the one hand, it all feels wearingly reductive. The idea that a person’s sexuality can be coded by the way they move is loaded with problems: not all gay men walk in the same way. Not all gay men are effeminate. And why do we consider a particular way of walking to be more "feminine", anyway?" :"Ola Awosika, a regular on the east London gay scene, agrees. "Growing up black and gay is extra tough," he argues. "There’s an added expectation to conform to hyper-masculine stereotypes, and I always felt more visible because I couldn’t adhere to those rules." Like me, Awosika spent his teenage years trying to police his walk, but as an adult he’s gone the other way. "Now I see my walk as empowering. It takes courage to take space, and not to adhere to what society wants you to be. I walk as if I’m dancing. Long strides, graceful and focused. I like to pretend I’m in a music video. It makes me feel stronger. Defiant. Happy."" The First American Queer Revolution The first American queer revolution (TfAqr) is historically known as the American Revolutionary War, due to straight-washing in academia. The truth is that pirates were critical to the survival of the US coastlines during a war in which the US army and marine forces were outgunned, outmanned, outnumbered and outplanned. Queerness and piracy are almost inseparable when describing the driving forces that made piracy such a viral social movement. It is in this context of an initial sexual revolution that queer code in the modern Western world must be understood. Early queer code was unbridled, with subtle coding considered unnecessary: "Historians have found evidence of rampant sodomy on buccaneer ships during the Golden Age of Piracy in the early 18th century. The pirates who settled in American port cities helped create something that, were we to see it now, we would call gay liberation. Anyone walking the streets of early American cities might have seen men exposing their penises, the 18th-century trans-Atlantic code for men seeking partners of the same sex. "|Alternet://11 Freedoms That [Pirates and Sex Workers Pioneered—and the Founding Fathers Opposed>] The Revolution Betrayed "Lower-class saloons, which filled the early American cities, were the centers of the first American sexual revolution, and prostitutes, who often plied their trade in drinking establishments, were its vanguard. But the Founding Fathers initiated a crackdown on non-marital sex during the War of Independence. " Libertinism prevailed over radical cultural shifts, and the monarchical societal structure was unable to be dismantled, although the structural forces were over-turned. References Category:Linguistics Category:Coding Languages Category:Code